hstyle

hstyle is a customizable code style checker for Haskell programs.

Installation & running

cabal install hstyle
hstyle --help

Status

Currently, we have a framework which allows developers to write rules for a certain codestyle. Some examples of these rules can be found in src/HStyle/Rules.

We have:

• Very simple checks (trailing whitespace, no tabs...)
• Some more advanced checks (case x of y alignment, data type alignment...)
• Automatic fixing for some simple cases (remove trailing whitespace, remove tabs...)

Overall, we don't consider it ready for production use.

Known issues

Comment madness

Crazy {- ... -} comments can confuse the style checker. E.g.

fib :: Int
    -> {- -> -} Int
fib 0 = 1
fib n = fib (n - 1) + fib (n - 2)

But I guess that's not the way you want to write code if you want to adhere to any style guide out there.

Literate Haskell

...is currently not supported. It should not be too hard to implement.

Can't parse some instance declarations

This is probably due to a bug(?) in haskell-src-exts, as the hlint tool runs into the same problem.

Customizing

Apart from an executable, the cabal file also provides a library, which can be used to customize hstyle.

1. Implement your own rules, or use existing ones.
2. Write a small program using HStyle.Main.mainWith, supplying your custom ruleset.
3. Optionally, send me a pull request or patch so I can add your rules to the framework.

Future

In the future we hope to build more sophisticated checking. The ultimate goal would be an automatic reformatter that generates gorgeous code -- but that's a hard problem.